Netflix is working to crack down on account sharing between households, and is now testing an added fee for Netflix users in Latin America who have provided their passwords to people outside of their immediate home. As reported by Bloomberg, Netflix customers who share their passwords in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic will need to pay additional money.
Netflix had previously been testing an add-on fee for account sharing in Chile, Costa Rica, and Peru, but the test is now expanding to additional countries. In Argentina, customers will need to pay 219 pesos ($1.70), while the fee will be $2.99 in other countries.
Netflix's terms of service do not allow for multi-household account sharing, but Netflix has tended to look the other way as password sharing is a common practice. The company is no longer willing to allow the practice to go on because it has been losing money as of late.
In the first quarter of 2022, Netflix lost subscribers for the first time in 10 years, and the losses are expected to continue. As a result, Netflix is ending account sharing and is also working on an ad-supported streaming tier that will be more affordable.
An estimated 222 million paying households are sharing with an additional 100 million households that are not being monetized, and Netflix is planning to implement "more effective monetization of multi-household sharing" as part of a strategy to increase revenue.
Customers in countries where Netflix is testing added fees will have the option to pay the fee for access or move to a new, paid account. Netflix is allowing people to access their accounts while traveling, but if a person uses an account in a place that is not one of their paying households for over two weeks, the company will send an in-app notification requiring them to add a household for a fee or change the primary household.
Netflix has said that it is working to understand how the password-sharing crackdown will work in test countries before expanding the fee to additional countries.
Netflix continues to be the only major streaming service that charges by streaming quality. In the United States, Netflix charges $9.99 for the Basic no-HD plan that allows for streaming on a single device, $15.49 for a Standard HD plan that allows for two people to watch at the same time, and $19.99 for a Premium plan with Ultra HD streaming and support for four simultaneous viewers.
